


All I'll Ever Need to Sing for

by Kairi_Ruka



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Minor Original Character(s), Not Beta Read, Original Character Death(s), Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26922985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kairi_Ruka/pseuds/Kairi_Ruka
Summary: He remembered exactly how he felt after Kronos' army was defeated. Oh, if only that was the only thing he'd lost that day. But he knew what the hollow feeling in his chest was. He'd planted a subtle magic on all of his siblings, a little part of his, so he would know when one of them got struck down. Since the first phase of the Titan's plan, he'd already felt a few faded.And another, and another, and another.He simply put a strong face in front of the others and ensured them that their siblings' sacrifices were not in vain.
Relationships: Alabaster Torrington & Hecate, Howard Claymore & Alabaster Torrington
Kudos: 15





	All I'll Ever Need to Sing for

**Author's Note:**

> All characters and settings at whatnot belong to Rick Riordan, my original characters are mine, this fic is mine. No, I don't get any profit from this. 
> 
> Title from Hated by Life Itself english cover by Oktavia in Youtube. You can hear that while reading this, because the whole thing actually inspired me to write Alabaster
> 
> Enjoy!

There were a lot of things Alabaster had done that he never regretted. Fighting for the honour of his mother was one of them. Losing his brothers and sisters in the process was not.

He didn't regret bringing them into the fray. He was the strongest. He was supposed to lead them. He did that, sure, but he also failed at protecting them.

He'd known that he would have to face loss at the end of the war. What he hadn't known was that he would be the sole survivor.

He remembered exactly how he felt after Kronos' army was defeated. Oh, if only that was the only thing he'd lost that day. But he knew what the hollow feeling in his chest was. He'd planted a subtle magic on all of his siblings, a little part of his, so he would know when one of them got struck down. Since the first phase of the Titan's plan, he'd already felt a few faded.

And another, and another, and another.

He simply put a strong face in front of the others and ensured them that their siblings' sacrifices were not in vain.

The longer he told them that, the longer he watched how Luke -- Kronos, it's Kronos -- acted, more and more sporadic the more time went … he felt terrified. Because he couldn't completely believe it himself.

Were the sacrifices really not in vain? Were they really?

When the war was over, all of the strings that attached him to them had been crudely severed. All his siblings, all twelve of them dead. It was a jarring concept to accept.

He was grieving. He was devastated. But mostly, he was enraged. He pushed his already spent magic to the point he felt completely lightheaded and cold and numb and … he couldn't find a word to describe it. He felt inhuman. He used it to do a private funeral rite for his siblings, far away and shielded from the heroes.

No. He wouldn't let one of those righteous people even catch the sight of his family, much less found their bodies, and then ramble on and on about just how heroic they are -- giving their enemies, the traitors, a proper funeral rite.

Alabaster listed their names as he encased his family members' bodies in shrouds he'd made with the expense of even more of his drained magic. He didn't care. He could drop dead later if he had to. Now, his siblings needed his respect for them.

Dieter, who was the most creative Mist user Alabaster had known, who could manipulate magic to a form so gruesome and eerie no one thought even existed, who always had a hard time making mistform cards because of his impatience on drawing. Indra, with a streak of pyromania, who always adored the idea of fire-breathing dragons, who dyed his hair bold red, who always grinned wide at every challenge they faced. Aira, his little sister, with her purple-dyed hair (Alabaster was sure it came from Indra's influence) and blindness that had never been an obstacle, who impressed even Kronos that he let her to stay as a fighter.

And much, much more. Not just as one of Kronos' soldiers, but mostly as siblings, as people Alabaster cared for. He had tried to keep his professionalism and kept his siblings at arm length. It didn't work. He still got attached.

And _nothing_ , even a volcano eruption, could rival his anger when in one dream, Hecate told him to stand down. He lashed out at her, spitting things from logical arguments why she couldn't just give in to venomous, heated meaningless phrases he didn't know he could let out.

It comforted him, somewhat, seeing that even in her distaste at his disrespectful tirade, she was distraught enough to not incinerate his mind on the spot. It comforted him to know that his siblings meant something to a goddess, to their mother, little as that meaning may be.

But it didn't comfort enough to not be furious. The other gods and their children had killed Hecate's children except from him and probably just a handful more that hadn't been in the chaos in the first place, and now she wanted to relent? She wanted to go back to her place, bowing down to them, after what they had done?

But he was struck silent when her mother told him _why_ she stopped fighting.

The gods had been blackmailing her with _him. With her own son._

Then they decided to exile him from the only place he knew had at least a middle-tier protection from monsters.

It wasn't like he could even tolerate the place anymore but-

_How dare they. How. Fucking. Dare. They._

He accepted it with wide-spread arms, though. Anywhere else would be better than there. He'd had this petty idea to absorb the camp magical barrier as a goodbye and leave them in a panic, but he quickly brushed the thought away.

There was no point in being petty.

And so started his life as a wanderer. Monsters flocked to him like spider kids flocking to their mother to eat her as their first meal.

It was fine. He handled them perfectly, swiftly. He was always a survivor after all. (Sometimes, the loneliness was depressing, the quiet was too loud, and he would sing off-key or find a piano either in a rental or in an abandoned old villa.)

Then, Lamia came barging into his life, yammering about her miserable life and her patron and she _just wouldn't stay dead._

Alabaster despised his life from then on, but he was still a survivor. He didn't give up. He wouldn't. When he died, then he would die fighting. He searched for solution after solution. Nothing worked.

Until, he was forced to move from his temporary home to another place again as Lamia wrecked the place to the ground, and a desperate solution came in the form of an arrogant mortal named Howard Claymore.

Claymore was the most arrogant mortal he'd ever known. But the sheer determination and intelligence in the man's eyes reminded him strongly of his own father.

Edward Torrington was nice, as far as fathers could go. He could do magic, pouring every drop of his body to learn it further. Hecate always said that Alabaster was basically a carbon copy of his father. The boy wasn't sure whether to take that as a challenge or a compliment. (He finally decided to take it as the latter).

Claymore was extremely apathetic and disinterested at first, which was good. Mortals who care too much would have a higher chance of their minds destroyed by even only the concept of the reality he lived in his whole life.

Unsurprisingly, the man came to him, only a little miffed by the idea that Greek mythology existed around him. There was a moment where Alabaster thought Claymore's mind would crumble, where the man looked like his world had been turned upside down. But then Lamia attacked, and Alabaster saw first-hand how stubborn the man was. He denied that they were similar in that way for the longest time possible.

_("Heroes never die, right?" he had asked, half-sarcastic and half-accepting. Claymore's disbelieving reaction to the words was priceless._

_____

_"But I'm not a hero," Claymore had said, right just before he wrestled Lamia backward, pushing them both to the corridor.)_

Claymore was dead. Alabaster didn't. But this time, the boy knew the older man's sacrifice wasn't in vain at all. It released magic powerful enough to be used by Hecate as a catalyst to separate her children away.

He was the only survivor again, this time. But as Claymore's mistform extended his hand to him, and as he took it to haul himself back up from the grass, he found that he accepted it.

He was a survivor. He will always be a survivor.

(And as he worked himself to the ground to search for a way to break Lamia's curse, with Claymore helping him along the way, he decided that it might not necessarily be a bad thing. It bought him time to fix what he could fix.)

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I love Alabaster. Yes, I love Claymore as his dad. Yes, I just want good things for both them. Hey Haley, please write more of them 
> 
> Sincerely,  
> an Alabaster simp who just want to take his custody


End file.
